So, let’s be clear that a housing crisis is completely distinct from a housing surplus. When there is a housing surplus in a particular locality or region, the value of houses tends to fall relative to the value of other things (such as food prices or fuel prices or prices of stocks). That is not a housing crisis, though it may be a financial crisis, especially for those who have speculatively gambled on financed real estate investments. Their choices may be “punished” by the natural consequence of severe financial losses.

However, when a personal financial crisis results from unsuccessful gambling on real estate, that is certainly not a large-scale housing crisis (as in a shortage of housing). That is just a personal financial crisis. Even when a financial credit bubble shrinks (“deflates”), that is at most a “financial crisis” (resulting in a sudden redistribution of affluence from debtors to creditors), not an actual economic crisis.

An economic crisis would be things like a shortage of food, a shortage of fuel, or even a shortage of housing. Rising prices are not an economic crisis. When housing prices were rising exponentially prior to recent years, those rising prices were not an economic crisis. Currently, as fuel prices approach their 2008 highs, that is not an economic crisis either.

Gasoline prices are currently over $10 per gallon (again) in the UK. That has resulted in an economic shift as people spend more on priority fuel expenses and less on things like housing or recreation or travel. That was the basic point of my 2004 article, “The Real U.S. Deficit: OIL,” and in particular of the section I titled “the dominoil effect.”

So, if there is a large-scale economic crisis in the world today, it is simply the redistribution of affluence away from places that used to dominate economically, like the UK, Germany, and Japan, toward places that have the most valued resources, like OPEC.

In the 20th century, the US and the USSR rose from relative obscurity to be the two dominant superpowers of global economics. Why? Was it similar political systems? No. (Lots of other places also had political systems similar to either the US or the USSR.) So, what did they have in common?

The US was the #1 producer of oil in the world for most of the 20th century. The #2 oil-producing region for most of the 20th century was the USSR (and that geographic region is now referenced as the “Former” Soviet Union or FSU).

By 1991, the USSR’s economic boom was waning. By 1999, the economic boom of the US was showing signs of instability as well. However, a boom in borrowing extended the US economy temporarily.

From where did the US borrow to fund the final boom in housing? To a great extent, the population of the US (and the government of the US) borrowed from it’s trading partners, as in from those that the US imported goods, such as Communist China as well as the booming OPEC countries.

So, what is underway in Japan and the EU and the US? A financial shift as in a shift in ownership. The ownership of companies in those countries is shifting away from those countries to the emerging new powers.

Note that my personal opinion is that most references to other issues besides this are distractions for those who are unwilling or unable to recognize the simplicity of what is happening. Creating political dramas (such as controversies and promises of political solutions) are the jobs that politicians are hired and trained to perform, similar to professional wrestlers or to actors or agents of any other kind.

This is an actual segment from a pro wrestling TV show in 2008 featuring the campaigning of candidate Senator Barrack Obama:

So, national and local politicians are agents of a larger “drama.” The myth of dictatorship is that a single patriarch is the entire issue, such as Hitler or Pope Benedict, who formally announced the Holy Roman Inquisition of ritual human sacrifice and torture. Was the figurehead who announced something (even if listed as the official author of something) perhaps supported by a staff of advisors, “ghost-writers,” and even lobbyists and founding sources?

If there are empires and dynasties with a series of imperialist figureheads, then perhaps the entire bureaucracy that supports any particular figurehead has a functioning role in the activity known as imperialism. Was Woodrow Wilson personally responsible for the development of the Federal Reserve, or was it Colonel House (his top adviser), or was it a half dozen people or a few hundred or a few thousand or a few million?

Pope Benedict did not personally perform the Inquisition. He had help.

Hitler did not personally invade Poland or France. He had help, too.

These people merely were the mouthpieces for “ripe” social initiatives that obviously involved the cooperation of thousands of active participants. One individual is not solely responsible for the collaboration of thousands of people. That is why empires can last beyond the lifetime of a single founder or proponent, such as comrade Lenin.

Otherwise, we could blame George Washington personally for the policies carried out in the name of the United States at My Lai during the invasion of Vietnam by the U.S. Military. Blaming is the denial of responsibility. Beware of those who reject any responsibility for their own participation in social trends.

Here is a message from WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) in 2008 from the RNC (Republican National Convention) repeating basically the same mentality as all other propaganda campaigns to encourage political activism and “good citizenship through voting:

Like in the above 2008 video of the WWE’s promotion of participation in the Republican and Democratic Party’s conventions, the masses are indoctrinated as to what trivial issues to heroically campaign for or against. Of course, to the passionate masses, those political issues are not labeled trivial. If successful, a campaign may produce a result that is not personally trivial, similar to a successful lawsuit.

Further, to those who benefit from the distraction of the masses, the various trivial issues have a function that is not trivial. For instance, a major Chinese bank, HSBC, has been growing in the US, UK, and Canada for quite a while. HSBC stands for Hong-Kong Shang-hei Banking Corporation. Below is an image of currency issued by HSBC. Note also that Hong Kong was a British colony until recently.

As the masses invest their attention in political activism rather than in making simple and practical financial adjustments (such as prudent re-allocation of investments as well as re-structuring their finances to access the fullest advantages and protections of the current legal system), creditors like HSBC increase their concentration of affluence. Focus away from it or toward it, but either way there is a massive redistribution of affluence away from the debt-addicted middle class of the West and toward the creditors to whom they owe their homes (and who increasingly are the shareholders that own the companies for which they work).

Why does the FDA promote behaviors that increase obesity and diabetes and medical addictions? Well, what private commercial interests lobbied for the formation of the FDA and have always directed the public policies of the FDA? Why do public schools prepare people for the lives that fit the interests of those who design and fund public education systems? Why is there an immense programming of non-violence and gun control in recent decades?

Yuri Bezmenov, who allegedly has been evading his former employer the KGB for decades, provided some possible explanations in 1984 in the video below. By the way, note that anyone who naively trusts the absolute veracity of any “former” spy might not know much about the nature of organized crime syndicates or secret police agencies. Even if Yuri was totally sincere, it may be that the KGB (and those who formed and direct it outside of public attention) may value his publicizing of certain information. Also keep in mind that in the US the CIA and NSA operated prior to publicity drawing attention to their operation or influence.

Propaganda is the crowning genius of the great imperialist interests. If the NSA agents claim to have higher authority than the CIA which claims to have authority over the US military-industrial complex, then one might ask what interests formed and direct the NSA? Who guides those who guide those who guide the masses?

Well, who are we taught is both evil and, even more important, defeated? Those KGB agents are rather clever, aren’t they?

Of course, I am joking to suggest that the KGB currently rules the world. No organization that is publicly recognized to exist would ever be the heart of imperialism, not the BIS or the Vatican or HSBC. Obviously, propagandists rule the world and their specialty is misdirection, right?